1. About This Documentation

This is the documentation for version 5.0 of Bugzilla, a bug-tracking system from Mozilla. Bugzilla is an enterprise-class piece of software that tracks millions of bugs and issues for thousands of organizations around the world.

The most current version of this document can always be found on the Bugzilla website.

1.1. Evaluating Bugzilla

If you want to try out Bugzilla to see if it meets your needs, you can do so on Landfill, our test server. The Bugzilla FAQ may also be helpful, as it answers a number of questions people sometimes have about whether Bugzilla is for them.

1.2. Getting More Help

If this document does not answer your questions, we run a Mozilla forum which can be accessed as a newsgroup, mailing list, or over the web as a Google Group. Please search it first, and then ask your question there.

If you need a guaranteed response, commercial support is available for Bugzilla from a number of people and organizations.

1.3. Document Conventions

This document uses the following conventions:

Warning

This is a warning—something you should be aware of.

Note

This is just a note, for your information.

A filename or a path to a filename is displayed like this: /path/to/filename.ext

A command to type in the shell is displayed like this: command --arguments

A sample of code is illustrated like this:

First Line of Code
Second Line of Code
...

This documentation is maintained in reStructured Text format using the Sphinx documentation system. It has recently been rewritten, so it undoubtedly has bugs. Please file any you find, in the Bugzilla Documentation component in Mozilla's installation of Bugzilla. If you also want to make a patch, that would be wonderful. Changes are best submitted as diffs, attached to a bug. There is a Style Guide to help you write any new text and markup.

1.4. License

Bugzilla is free and open source software, which means (among other things) that you can download it, install it, and run it for any purpose whatsoever without the need for license or payment. Isn't that refreshing?

Bugzilla's code is made available under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL), specifically the variant which is Incompatible with Secondary Licenses. However, again, if you only want to install and run Bugzilla, you don't need to worry about that; it's only relevant if you redistribute the code or any changes you make.

Bugzilla's documentation is made available under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA International License 4.0, or any later version.

1.5. Credits

The people listed below have made significant contributions to the creation of this documentation:

Andrew Pearson, Ben FrantzDale, Byron Jones, Dave Lawrence, Dave Miller, Dawn Endico, Eric Hanson, Gervase Markham, Jacob Steenhagen, Joe Robins, Kevin Brannen, Martin Wulffeld, Matthew P. Barnson, Ron Teitelbaum, Shane Travis, Spencer Smith, Tara Hernandez, Terry Weissman, Vlad Dascalu, Zach Lipton.


This documentation undoubtedly has bugs; if you find some, please file them here.